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teaandcartography · 1 month

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March 20th, 2024 - Therapy? Why?

I've had my fair share of experience in therapy. Good and bad.

The bad experiences were at the beginning of my search, when a therapist, though his intentions were good, tried to "heal" me through hypnosis.

I certainly didn't believe in hypnosis being an effective way of helping someone process their childhood trauma, but others might do. I remember my 15-year-young self thinking it was all bullshit and I just stopped going to those appointments. Thank God I didn't have to pay for said appointments.

My parents have expressed before that therapy is a waste of money. "All therapy is good for is the fact that you pay the therapist to tell you what to do," is what they said to 19-year-old me who had already given up on trying to seek comfort from her parents. So the next best thing was to seek help outside of school and family.

I mean, sure, you pay for a good therapist to tell you how to approach your life. Because clearly, something isn't working and you need help figuring out what does work.

The therapists I've seen in the last 7 years actually managed to give me new ways to process my negative feelings.

I haven't had $u!c!dal tendencies since my teenage years, and the advice that my therapists have given me definitely helped me prevent having said tendencies again.

The same with s3lf-mut!lat!on. I may only have been clean from SH again since four days ago, but at least I am not giving myself new scars that I have to look at for the rest of my life.

Therapy itself won't heal you. At least, I don't believe so. It's in the advice that therapists give you, that you find ways to love life again.

It's a painfully slow process and even I have had thoughts like:

"I should be over this by now."

"I'm too old to feel this way."

"I'm too young to feel this way."

"There are people who have it way worse."

"Others can deal with this just fine, why can't I?"

and those thoughts are self-destructive as hell too.

Some of us just need more time to heal or to pick ourselves back up. Just because it takes us a little longer, doesn't mean it's not happening, and we need to give ourselves more credit for that.

But realizing that is not as easy as one might believe. People with no $u!c!dal tendencies/thoughts, or people who have not experienced depression for longer than a season, might not realize that believing that we're doing well is extremely difficult.

We need that external push. And sometimes, that encouragement from a friend or family member just isn't enough. That's where therapy can be very useful.

But I also understand that therapy isn't accessible to everyone. It should be, but it's not. Everyone deserves to be able to walk into a therapy clinic and just say: "I need help. I don't feel good and I'm afraid I'll do something I can never undo," without having to worry about putting themselves in severe financial debt.

Unfortunately, that's not the world we live in right now. So here's me, your digital sister, to make you aware that you are not alone, and that there are ways for you to try and heal without the help of a professional.

I'm not a professional, far from it. And I'm sure you've already tried numerous things to try and make yourself feel better. It gets annoying to have people tell you over and over again to:

make a daily schedule, get into a pattern of living

make new friends

take a walk

write it down

take a shower

make yourself some tea

Even I found myself rolling my eyes when someone lists off these things. Like, yeah, I get it, those things might work for you, but they don't for me.

But I think we underestimate how having a daily pattern/ritual actually works. It's about training your brain to go: "Oh, we're taking a shower. Time to let everything go and relax. Tomorrow is another day we can try."

Yes, it's easier said than done. But repetition works wonders. The same way you teach a dog how to sit, you can train yourself that by doing something specific, you can let things go.

I'm still working on this myself. Right when I come back from work I change my clothes, or take a shower, eat food, and then sit down to do what I want to do. Me-time is extremely important, to have fun is extremely important.

The point I'm trying to make is that you can heal and work on feeling better about yourself. If you can't get help from your GP or a therapist, doing research about self-help and mindfulness is the next best thing.

But in order for any of that to work, you have to start believing that you can get through whatever you're going through.

If you're someone who's already saying: "This won't work for me anyway so I'm not even going to try," then all I can say to you is...

don't you dare take others down with you because you can't be arsed to help yourself.

#☆•° a diary of some sorts °•☆#Mental Health #Therapy #Mental Illness #Mental Health Support #Thoughts #Feelings #Psychology #Effort

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